My Discwizard 11 results and identical results I achieved using EaseUS Todo Backup Free that I also tried has created an issue that just occurred to me. If a hard drive were to completely fail, would it be necessary to reinstall and reactivate later Windows versions such as 7 and 8 and then restore the backup image? It seems to me that would be necessary unless there's something about these backups of which I'm unaware. Does anybody know the answer to this question?

Further tests find the conclusion a reinstall is required in event of drive failure to be a false conclusion. The system the experiment was performed on had a wireless adapter used to connect to internet which was not yet configured. Once the wireless adapter was configured and Windows updates were installed, the "Activate Windows" tab disappeared from Change PC Settings in Win8.1Pro. I suppose Windows Update must detect whether a system is activated and removes the "Activate Windows" tab when it verifies Windows is activated.

This means Discwizard 11 is still a very good backup program up through Win8.1 as long as a backup image is restored to the same drive and partition as the image source. The majority of users probably simply create and restore images of the OS drive/partition, and only a small minority use multi-boot systems or restore to partitions that are different from the source partition.

This means Discwizard 11 is still a very good backup program up through Win8.1 as long as a backup image is restored to the same drive and partition as the image source.

I think this generalization is probably true for all (most?) imaging software. We found this to be true with Ghost 2003 and Corp. Ghost 8.x--as long as the image is a partition only restore (it could come from a whole drive image as long as it is a partition only restore), and it is restored to the original source system, HDD, and partition--everything should work without any issues.

Further tests find the conclusion a reinstall is required in event of drive failure to be a false conclusion.

Usually, in the event of *drive failure*--you have to replace the failed HDD with a new one! That should have created a boot failure that required at the very least a *repair*--but, you don't mention anything like that.

Once the wireless adapter was configured and Windows updates were installed, the "Activate Windows" tab disappeared from Change PC Settings in Win8.1Pro.

I have not worked with Win8.x, so I am unsure if the above behavior is specific to Win8.x. In earlier versions of Windows, if you make a partition image of an already activated OS, and then restore that partition image to the same source system, same HDD, same partition, then I've never seen any type of request to re-active the OS.

Was the image you restored taken after OS installation, but before OS Activation (but you have already entered the Product Key)? And, if so, then restoring that image would always be prior to activation, and the OS would show that procedure occurring each time you restore that image. And it should succeed--presumably because the product activation code should be the same as the previous activation code because everything on the system has remained the *same*! As I understand it, there has to be enough hardware changes to make it look like the system is a whole new computer before re-activation and validation will occur (probably changing just a failed HDD will not trigger the activation process to think you have a whole new computer).

Re: Best Backup Program for Win8.1Reply #18 - Feb 22nd, 2015 at 11:14am

It/s the same system in reply #14, and a new hard drive was used. The wireless PCI adapter had to be changed because the old one didn't work for Win8.1 which is why there was no internet connection initially.

The activate Windows tab showed up when the image was restored to the new drive and before the internet connection was established. The activate Windows tab disappeared when the internet connection was established. I can only guess that Win8.1 must assume it's no activated when there's no internet connection and that maybe Windows Update verifies activation.